I'm Sorry I Mispelled Your Made Up Name

It's 3 days before Valentine's day and I open up my daughter's book bag to go through her folder of homework and things sent home and in the pile is a pink piece of paper that says "Valentine's Day Party" on it. I pull out the paper to read it, as I do every single year, and can't help but say out loud "What the hell is our world coming to?!" On the sheet of paper is a paragraph about the classroom's Valentine party and exchange of Valentine's Day cards and under it a list of 23 names. Of those 23 names only about 4 were "traditional" names. And many of the names had really crazy spellings. Some of the names were so long, I knew there was no way my 8 year old daughter was going to be able to write the names on the cards herself since she still writes large and not very neatly (thank you whoever decided we should not teach handwriting in schools anymore).

This is America...the great melting-pot...and unless you are a Native American, your family tree began somewhere other than The United States of America. Knowing that, I do not expect everyone to be named after all the Catholic Saints (the choice of my paternal grandparents for their 7 children) or for everyone to be named after characters of classic literature like my mom chose to do for me (I will just say that my name was chosen from the book Little Women), but I think there needs to be a line drawn at some point. Before I say much more, I will admit that I have 3 children and 2 of them have "normal" names that have non-traditional spellings. My 8 year old daughter's name is Alayna and my 5 year old son's name is Jaxson so I understand the urge to spell names differently and I also understand why so many people want to give their kids names that are original. My kids have 5 Uncle Bobs between my family and their father's family. I completely understand why people are seeking new and exciting things to name their children. But the names I am seeing and the spellings...well, it makes me cringe.

I have noticed that, at least where I live, that the names people are giving to their children show a lack of education and the most basic of English language skills. Before you go...you spelled Jaxson with an "s" after the "x" and proper English would say that the "x" was sufficient since it makes the "s" sound, let me just explain that my I spelled my daughter Alayna's name PHONETICALLY so that pronunciation would not be an issue, yet I am continually asked how to say her name. Her name is pronounced "a-lay-na" or I guess I could say it is pronounced "ah-lay-nah" but since everyone who learned the alphabet was taught that a small letter "A" makes the sound "ah," I figured that no one would have a problem saying her name. Obviously I was WRONG! But I can't blame teachers or even other parents for clarifying how to pronounce even the most seemingly simplistic names because there are a lot of parents out there that will jump down your throat when you say the name Aireonna wrong. That is a name I recently was introduced to and I thought I would say it like it is spelled but when I said it that way I was corrected and told the child's name is "ar-E-on-ah" (I do not know how to put the line over the "e" to make long "e" sound correctly, hence the need to capitalize the letter E) So, why did they put the word "air" in it if you don't say the word "air?" Of course I did not ask that question, but this is exactly the type of ridiculousness I am talking about.

Does anyone think about the fact that their children have to go through life with names like this? One of my favorite naming conventions that has taken the world by storm is adding an apostrophe to names. Names like J'aquan and D'andre are commonplace in the area I live. I once met a woman who named her daughter J'leesa and when I asked how she spelled it she responded "You spell it J-tick mark- l-e-e-s-a." Yes....she said "tick mark." We have an entire generation of people naming children and using punctuation in names and they do not even know that "tick marks" are apostrophes and "dashes" are hyphens!

It's bad enough that famous people name their kids things like Apple, Rain, Gravity, Pilot and River but they are also FAMOUS so who is going to mess with their kids? And those kids can probably afford to change their names someday. Little Laarvionte, Taki, and Shy-Anne now have to go through life with names that people can't spell, pronounce or even understand. I even know of someone who named their child Kharma and yes....Kharma is a girl. Can you just imagine the rest of that poor child's life?

Many years ago I remember my mother telling me of her nanny named Vagina. My mother grew up in the south at a time in our history when African Americans were segregated and not even allowed an education. So, Vagina's mom had no idea that she was naming her child after the same anatomy that the child had come out of. We came all this way as a country...as a nation...so that our current and future generations may very well name their children after body parts on purpose?

I think that at some point enough is enough! Stop adding extra letters and punctuation. If you don't know what an apostrophe is then you should not be allowed to use it in a name for your some poor baby you give birth to. And why must there be so many a's in Laarvionte? Why did someone name their child Taki? That is a snack food for goodness sake! Why are we giving children names like Joshiana, Zayden, and Deja? And I don't care what any of these people say...your child's name has no meaning in a baby name book. If you found your child's name in a baby name book then everyone would know how to spell and pronounce it! These new baby name books are coming out and adding these crazy names in and I think they are just making up meanings. If my own name, that is traditional and "common" has a stupid meaning then your made up name doesn't even have one!!!! If you want to give a made up name to something give it to a pet because the names people are giving to their children that then go to school with my children are making it hard for me to make sure they understand how to pronuounce and punctuate correctly!!!